The hour hand of a university chapel clock that was taken during a student prank and replaced with a cardboard replica has been returned after nearly a century. Trixie Baker inherited the hour hand from her late father, Geoffrey Hunter Baker, who died in 1999 at the age of 83. Geoffrey and a fellow undergraduate prankster had taken the clock hands from Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge, under the cover of darkness and replaced them with cardboard copies. These worked until it rained. The college replaced the hands, and it appears the pranksters were not known until now. Trixie returned the hour hand to Gonville & Caius last year. The college archivist, James Cox, welcomed Trixie and received the clock hand for the college archive alongside other tales of student pranks, known as “rags.” Gonville & Caius was founded in 1348 and refounded in 1557, and has a history of student pranks, including replacing a German artillery gun on display in Caius Court in 1921, and placing an Austin Seven van on the roof of the university’s Senate House in 1958.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/mar/29/hour-hand-returned-cambridge-university-gonville-caius-clock-prank